Is There Too Much Copy on Your Website?

Sales says: “There’s a LOT of copy on the website. I’d rather have less copy and drive visitors to Contact Us to learn more.”

Although Sales/Biz Dev might want the entire focus of the website to be on driving leads (and so, may believe there is “too much copy” on the website for lead generation), the website has to meet the needs of your entire audience.

Each of your visitors can be in different buying stages. At any point in time, visitors to your website include:

“A” leads – those visitors ready to talk to a salesperson today, but always the smallest group.

“B” leads — those actively looking for a solution, but may not want to talk to a salesperson – they’re looking to see what’s out there, and trying to narrow down their potential vendor list. If this audience doesn’t get their questions answered on your website, they’ll probably just move on to your competitors’ websites. It’s too early in the process for them to want to take the time to talk to a particular company — they’re still researching options.

“C” leads — the “sightseers.” These visitors may want to learn more, but aren’t actively searching for a solution today. Similar to “B” leads, they won’t bother contacting you if they have questions.

To capture contact information from the widest group of visitors, you need offers that meet visitor needs at their various buying stages.

o Those just starting their research want to learn more, they want to be educated. So offer them something that will help them learn more — like a special report or white paper or comparison report or case study(ies) in their industry.

o These visitors want to know what your solution can do – so they can decide whether to put your company on the potential vendor list or not.

o If you’re selling B2B, there may be multiple decision-makers. Each decision-maker may be looking for different things in your solution. (And there may be multiple types and levels of visitors to your website from the same company.)

o Some visitors may come with a specific list of requirements that they’re looking for — if you don’t have enough detail, it’s too easy for them to just go on to a competitor’s site.

Think that won’t happen? What do you do on an e-commerce site when you can’t find details on a particular product being sold? Don’t you just go search for another website? There’s almost always another website selling a similar product — with a more complete explanation.

So “all that copy” is there to answer questions, to provide specifics — because SPECIFICS SELL. And it’s there to meet the needs of the range of visitors coming to your website.

How to Make “All That Copy” Not Look Like A Lot of Copy

1. Break up the copy — using numbered points and bullets.

2. Use specific subheads throughout. Specifics sell! And subheads help the scanning reader and can help your SEO.

3. Use on-page tabs.Tabs organize the copy (they’re like subheads) — but only the copy under one tab is displayed at any one time. For SEO purposes, though, the copy in ALL of the tabs is seen by search engine bots as being on that single page.

4. Use “See More” and “See Less” jquery or “accordion” type of functionality.

Visitors who want to learn more can click on the item and additional content is revealed right on the same page. This is a great solution to provide the detail needed — AND keep enough content on a page for SEO reasons.

The search engine bots see all of the copy as being on the page, whether it’s displayed by default or not.

(Hey Sales, improving SEO will help drive more traffic!) In general, many improvements to a website that are good for the visitor tend to be good for SEO as well.

How have you handled the “how much copy do we need” issue on your website?